see basically the actions taken by executive fiat, which is even more anathema to senators mccain, graham, and others. that is a sideshow, a three- ring circus, and have a couple of side rings that remain as well. one thing i would say about the fiscal cliff, at one level you could say there's no great sense of urgency. as many people have said, it is more a fiscal slump than cliff. it is not like we're going to plunge into the hole if we don't fix this immediately. there are many things that an administration can do to ameliorate the impact of many of the tax cuts and of the budget cuts. there are some significant amounts of discussion about how you deal with budgets. you can move accounts that aren't among the things related to public safety. it is not quite the same as it was when we had the shutdown of the government in 1995, but there is a lot of discretion there, and among other things, you can have an administration that decides to not to effectively change withholding rates to keep the immediate impact of the tax cuts from taking hold. you can do that for only certain time. that i